I find myeslf with time to spare tonight. Not because I have done everything I need to do, but because we find our little family staying at Jon and Susans house for the week. Its very nice of them to take us in for what was supposed to be 5 days, but looks like being more like 8 or 9. This is bacsue our house needed a little bit of work done on the floor in the living room and at the top of the stairs. However, the bloke that is doing the work has fallen a little behind the timetable and what should have really been completed tomorrow morning will now hopefully be done by Monday afternoon.
The job itself is to clean, repair and replace the broken and breaking parts of our old Oak floor and then refinish it with waterproof sealant and stain. For the last few days the floor of the house has looked like this....
Its starting to look a little more finished now...
But the sanding and painting starts tomorrow, which means we can't stand or walk on the floor. Most of the furniture is piled up under a dustsheet, with some of it in a huge mess in the basement, so there's no real living there with kids until its all done.
We are very lucky though and very grateful that we have good Grandparents who not only have room, but who are willing to help us out until its all done! Thank you!
This affects us in other ways too - I could work from anywhere, but the kids go to school 2 blocks from our house, which means at 8am in the morning I have to drive the main route for everyone to get to work downtown, so it's a 45-minute drive on very slippy roads. The kids have to get up early, I have to get up early, and we have to do the whole thing at 3.30 every day to get back home. Remember that I work till 5pm, so I am also lucky that my bosses at work are happy for me to drop off and pick the kids up, but I do need to make up my work time, so I am working late every night. All in all It's pretty annoying and tiring compared to our normal life of a 3-minute drive to work and 3-minute walk to school.
Anyway as I mention the roads are slippy - Everyone in Winnipeg reading this can skip a paragraph, but for the rest of the world, Mid-January in Winnipeg is the coldest part of the winter - and this year has been really, really cold. For the last week or 10 days, its been dangerously cold. Down below -40Celsius real feel during the day, which means just a minute or two outside is not only very uncomfortable, but can give you a good frostbite easily. Plus we had a bit of a blizzard last weekend which meant hundreds of cars off the road and for a few hours at least Winnipeg was cut off from pretty much everywhere else - you literally could not see the roads as blowing snow, over white snow on the surface made visibility impossible.
Here's a video showing some of the crazy conditions and crashes - It's 8 minutes long, but just the first couple of minutes will give you a great look at what it was like!!
Away from the weather and the house repairs, the last few weeks have been pretty good - We did Christmas, the kids got lots of candy and toys plus an indoor swing and gymnastic rings set up in the basement!. We have a lovely Christmas day out at Megan and Brent's with family. Stef and Alana also got back from their year in New Zealand and we got to see them a few times including a night out at our local 'Barnhammer' for a couple of beers as well as them babysitting for an evening which the kids LOVED! I could list a whole load of stuff or just post a few photos and videos, so thats what I am going to do - a picture paints a thousand words, eh!
I also finally managed to build another Ice Tower. Not my best effort and not my biggest at just over 8 feet. But I did put a slurpee on top!
Anyway, here's some fun news - Hannah lost a Unicorn last week on the way home from school and was very upset. But she came up with a plan and made some 'lost' posters which I put up outside school, (in minus 30) hoping for someone to see them and the very slight chance we may get the unicorn back.
We didn't hold out much hope.... Until the next day when one of the teachers called the number on the poster and said:- ' I am hoping to reunite a happy child with her unicorn' - She had found it AND seen the posters! So the unicorn was left in the school office, and Hannah was very happy to get Sparklecorn back. I never thought it would have worked, especially with the weather, but there you go - there are still some nice people out there!
IA couple of other things happened. Hannah ended up with a private dance lesson, when the rest of her class shied off due to weather and holidays - so the teacher and Hannah made up their own dance routine, and she loved it! She also came downstairs one day dressed as me, in my clothes, complete with big belly. She is getting very very cheeky and I love it!
Ollie has been playing on the basement swing so much - he loves that thing! He also helps me out at work in my office sometimes, as well as sharing 3 sleds with Hannah on the way to school.
Ill be back again in a few weeks with an update - there's a lot coming up!!
No comments:
Post a Comment